Kant on the Embodied Cognition

My aim in this paper is to explode two myths about Kant. The first myth is that Kant’s early pre-critical writings are uninteresting dogmatic juvenelia written when Kant was under the spell of Leibniz and Wolff. On the contrary, I find the pre-critical works interesting both in their own right and for understanding the origins of Kant’s celebrated critical system of philosophy. I also believe that, from his very first writings, the pre-critical Kant broke from both Leibniz and Wolff. The second myth is that Kant, as the paradigm of “Enlightenment rationality” either ignored or evinced a hostile disdain for philospohical issues connected with our embodiment. Although I am sympathetic with the feminist critics who push this line, I believe that in this case they are dead wrong. Despite appearances, Kant was very much concerned with the philosophical significance of embodiment. I think that this concern manifested itself throughout Kant’s career, although I admit that it is most evident in the relatively litle-known early and late works